Today Women Celebrate Ambition, Passion, Hard Work and Persistence!

Today Women Celebrate Ambition, Passion, Hard Work and Persistence!

International Women’s Day (IWD) has been observed since the early 1900’s – a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies. The first National Woman’s Day was held on February 28, 1909 in New York, organized by the Socialist Party of America at the suggestion of Theresa Malkiel -labor activist, suffragist, and educator.

Years later, in 1910, at the International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, German Socialist Luise Zietz proposed the establishment of an annualWomen’s Day. Delegates from over 17 countries agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights including suffrage for women. The International Women’s Day has been celebrated since then in more than 100 countries around the world.

Today, women all around the world celebrate AMBITION, CONFIDENCE, PASSION, HARD WORK, BRAVERY, and PERSISTENCE. Today the World celebrates WOMEN.

♥ SELF-BELIEF

Look at any successful women out there and you will discover how much they truly believe in themselves. Self-Belief is probably the most important trait women possess, if you don’t believe you can succeed, then you won’t get very far.

Theresa May never doubted herself and that confidence is what landed her one of the most prestigious positions in her country.

Do you BELIVE in yourself?

♥ AMBITION

The German Chancellor has held the top spot on the Forbes Most Powerful Women List for seven consecutive years, and 12 years in total. Angela Merkel knows what she wants. She strives to push forward. Always aims for the top. Nothing stopping her. She might bend, but she will never break because it’s in her nature as a strong woman.

How AMBITIOUS are you?

♥ PASSION

First female NFL coach, speaker, PH.D., professional football player and gold medalist; Dr. Jen Welter knows how far you can go if you follow your passion. With a master’s degree in sports psychology and a Ph.D in psychology, Welter -a former rugby player at Boston College- wants little girls to grow up knowing they can do anything, even play football.

Passion is what helps you moving forward day after day and, like Anita Roddick once said: “To succeed you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality.”

What’s your PASSION?

♥ SENSE OF PURPOSE

All she was doing was “trying to get home from work”, but she did infinitely more than that: Rosa Parks became an overnight figurehead for the civil rights movement in the US. On December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old African-American seamstress refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the Montgomery City bus.

This isolated act and a single reply – ‘no, I’m not’ – ignited a boycott which continued for 381 days until the city repealed its law enforcing racial segregation on public buses. In the words of Rosa Parks: “Somebody had to take the first step, and I made up my mind not to move.”

Do you know your life PURPOSE?

♥ BRAVERY

Malala Yousafzai was only twelve years old when the diary she used to document life under occupation by a hostile extremist group was released online for the BBC Urdu. The publication of her writings along with the New York Times documentary that followed gave Malala an incredible vast platform from which to advocate for female education.

The attention also made her a target for the Taliban. On October 9, 2012, a gunman boarded Malala’s school bus in Pakistan, asked her name and shot her three times in the head. Malala survived. Fear lost and bravery triumphed. In 2013, Time magazine listed Malala Yousafzai as one of ‘The 100 Most Influential People in the World’. On 10 October 2014, Malala co-received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Are you BRAVE?

♥ PERSISTENCE

To be successful you have to be persistent, and J.K. Rowling knows it.

A single mother enduring clinical depression, she wrote the first book of Harry Potter series. She submitted her manuscript to twelve different companies but was rejected by all of them. But she persisted and, one year later, a small London-based publishing company agreed to publish Harry Potter. The rest… is history.

How PERSISTENT are you?

Women like Amelia Earhart, Valentina Tereshkova, Anne Frank, Gloria Steinem, Oprah, Michelle Obama, Marie Curie. Women like those portrayed by Curtis and Jo Sittenfeld in The Hardest Working Women We Know, ordinary women like you and me: women like Nirva, Angie and Tessa, who wake up every day knowing that today is going to be challenging, but also rewarding, because these women choose to be confident, ambitious, passionate and strong.. above all else.

Happy Internationa Women’s Day to all the BEAUTIFUL, COURAGEOUS, STRONG and PASSIONATE women!

*(The Hardest Working Women We Know, by CURTIS SITTENFELD, PHOTOGRAPHS BY JO SITTENFELD. Posted on Shondaland.com on Nov.1, 2017)

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